Mobile computing devices are becoming ubiquitous tools for personal, business, and social uses. The portability of mobile computing devices is increasing as the size of the devices decrease and processing power increases. In fact, many computing devices are sized to be hand-held by the user to improve ease of use. Additionally, modern mobile computing devices are equipped with increased processing power and data storage capability to allow such devices to perform advanced processing. Further, many modern mobile computing devices are capable of connecting to various data networks, including the Internet, to retrieve and receive data communications over such networks. As such, modern mobile computing devices are powerful, often personal, tools untethered to a particular location.
As the processing power of mobile computing devices increases, many mobile computing devices are capable of contemporaneously running multiple applications and other background processes, such as notification processes. A user, however, typically can only interact directly with a single application or notification at one time, which may utilize the entire viewing display of the mobile computing device during such interaction. As such, other applications and/or background processes may use simplistic icon notifications to alert the user that additional information relating to the application or notification of the associated icon is available. For example, a badge, number, or other indicator may be overlaid on the associated application or notification icon to indicate to the user that additional information regarding the application/notification is available (e.g., the number of unread emails may be overlaid on the e-mail application icon, the number of software updates may be overlaid on an application icon, etc.). Such indicators only provide a notification of additional information but do not provide any portion of the additional information itself. Rather, to access the additional information, the user is often required to exit the application the user is currently using and select the application/notification icon having overlaid the indicator(s) to fully open the associated application/notification. Additionally, such simplistic indicators provide no additional interaction options with the underlying application/notification thereby further requiring the user to open fully the underlying application/notification to perform any interaction therewith.